


Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Cave-In, Discussion of Amputation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23793394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: Sam leaps into somebody trapped under a rock in a cave.
Relationships: Sam Beckett/Al Calavicci
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	Between a Rock and a Hard Place

**Author's Note:**

> i only did like fifteen minutes of medical research for this fic so you'll just have to suspend your disbelief on this one

Almost as soon as Sam leaped a wave of pain slammed into him, knocking all the air out of his lungs. He gasped, eyes squeezing shut against it, trying to think, trying to breathe through the crushing pain. Calm. He tried for calm. Tried to focus on where it was coming from. 

It was his left leg. Whoever he had leaped into had their left leg trapped under a sickeningly large boulder. Sam blinked away tears as his eyes flitted, taking in the rest of his surroundings. 

He was in a cave, in a sort of tunnel, with a dark passage narrowing at an angle above him and widening below him. He was wearing climbing gear and some kind of uniform (the name over the pocket on his chest identified him as H. Fuller with Mammoth Cave National Park), and he could feel the slosh of water in the bag on his back when he turned infinitesimally to look up the passage. The headlight he was wearing shone on dark rock, the path curving out of sight. He looked down and saw much the same thing, the cave opening up slightly before twisting in such a way that all he could see was the far wall. 

Sam tried to shift enough to get a better angle looking down but the tug on his trapped leg sent another dizzying wave of pain through him and he cried out. The sound echoed back to him and he gritted his teeth. He could feel blackness lapping at the edge of his consciousness and he shut his eyes again as he sucked in air through his clenched jaw. Fainting would relieve the pain, yes, but time unconscious would be valuable time lost in figuring how to get out of here. Surely that was what he was here to do, just to get out of here. Al would find him soon enough and then all he’d have to do would be to make it out of the cave.

Sam took as deep a breath as he could manage and yelled. 

“Help!” He listened to the echo for a moment before calling again, louder. And then, because he doubted anybody could hear him and the prospect made him feel sick with desperation, “ _Al!_ ” 

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Al winked into view beside him, but to Sam it felt like an eternity. 

He heard him before he saw him. “Holy moly. Sam—“

“Where have you been?” Sam moaned, looking around the cave and landing on Al at last, who winced and ducked his eyes out of the immediate beam of the headlight. “I’m stuck here with a rock on my leg and you were—“

“I got here as soon as I could, I’m sorry.” Al’s expression was horror-struck and he ran a hand over his face as he stepped closer. “Did you try to push it off already?”

“ _Yes,_ I tried to push it off already!” Sam snapped, then sighed shakily. “What do you have for me, anything?” 

The handlink whirred as Al smacked it. “You’re Henry Fuller, you’ve been a surveyor with the national park service for about three years, and you’re declared missing on March 10th, 1968, that’s two days from now. Apparently you left to catalog some newly discovered species of bat and you were never seen or heard from again, _well_ ,” Al gestured to the rock. “I can see why.” 

“Not helpful.” 

“Right.” Al looked back down at the handlink. “Ziggy gives you 98% probability you’re here to…” He trailed off and gave Sam a sympathetic look. 

“To what?” 

“To saw this guy’s leg off.” 

“Great.” Sam let his head fall back against the wall as he closed his eyes again. “That’s just great.” 

“You’re a doctor, you probably have a better chance of performing an emergency amputation than some park ranger—” 

“Sure, Al. Let’s keep that as a last resort, huh?” He opened one eye enough to watch as Al nodded jerkily. “Can you and Ziggy try to come up with something else? Preferably something that involves getting this off of me and preferably _quickly_?” 

“Yeah.” Al opened the door of the imaging chamber and Sam put a hand over his eyes to shield them from the bright light. “I’ll be back real soon, okay? Hang in there.” 

Sam waited until the door had closed and Al had vanished to give the boulder another experimental shove towards the tunnel below, and wiped at the fresh tears on his face when it stubbornly refused to budge. 

When Al came back he was grim and pale. “We don’t know where exactly you are and a search party won't be sent out for another fourteen hours. Ziggy gives you a good chance of being rescued if you can get this rock off you and crawl out of this tunnel, but—“

“How good a chance?” Sam cut him off. 

“What?”

“What’s the probability?”

Al grimaced. “52.6%”

“That’s barely half!” 

It’s as good as we’ve got!” Al said with a pinched look. “Sam—“

“I can’t cut my own leg off, okay? You said I’ve got fourteen hours until the rescue party goes out. That’s fourteen hours to think of something else.” 

“You’re right.” Al said as he spun around, looking helplessly up and down the tunnel. “Shine your light down this way, I’m gonna try and figure out which direction you should be going.”

Sam watched Al walk through the widening tunnel for a moment, his vision wavering as he struggled to keep his eyes open. He was starting to feel cold and feverish. The likelihood of him making it fourteen hours didn’t seem very high but he didn’t want to hear Ziggy’s numbers on that at all. Keeping the headlight turned toward the tunnel Al had gone to investigate, Sam rooted through his bag. 

He had a bottle of water, a notebook, more climbing gear, a compass, batteries for the headlight, and a small pocketknife. Nowhere near big enough for the kind of amputation Ziggy was suggesting. No painkillers of any type, either. Sam let out a frustrated sigh which turned into a startled sound when Al popped back into view. 

“The tunnel down opens onto a larger cavern but I couldn’t see much beyond that. There’s a number of other tunnels leading there but…” he trailed off as he looked at Sam, and Sam wondered how much worse he could look than he had five minutes ago. Surely not enough to make Al’s face do that. “I’m gonna check the tunnel up above, mind turning your light the other way?” 

Sam complied and watched Al make his way up through the narrowing tunnel, wincing in sympathy as he recalled how bad his friend was with small spaces. Al came back barely a minute later and shook his head. 

“It seems like it stays the same width for a while. Definitely enough space to climb through but just barely. Your best bet is to go down when the time comes.” Sam nodded and closed his eyes again, trying to block out the pain. “Hey. Don’t go to sleep, okay? I’m not the doctor and even I know that.” Sam grunted his acknowledgement. “I’m not kidding, Sam.” Al said a little louder, and Sam opened his eyes to glare. Al glared back at him. 

“Okay.” Sam relented. “Okay. I won’t go to sleep. I’ll just…” he leaned forward and gave another push on the rock. It moved just enough to make Sam bite back a scream of pain. 

“I have an idea.” Al said as Sam took several deep breaths. “I’m gonna go run some numbers through Ziggy and I’ll be back as soon as I can.” 

Sam nodded as he went. He couldn’t really blame Al for not wanting to stick around; Al didn’t do tight spaces and he didn’t do trapped and he didn’t do inaction. He was better at problem solving than at waiting, so Sam pushed down the pang in his chest at being left alone in the dimly lit cave, and set about trying to do a little problem solving of his own. 

Al didn’t come back for a long time. So long, in fact, that Sam had exhausted his options as far as getting his leg free was concerned. He’d all but given up on the idea of getting out of the cave, had almost resigned himself to this being the last leap and the end of his journey. He’d noticed himself drifting in and out of consciousness at some point but had given up making any real effort to stop it. Eventually he’d go out for good, and in the mean time the pain had diminished to something almost bearable. 

“Sam.” Al called his name and Sam opened his eyes with some effort. “Oh, Sam, I told you not to go to sleep. Didn’t any of that medical training make it through that swiss-cheesed brain of yours?” Al sounded scared. 

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Sam tried to reassure him, tried to reach out and pat his cheek and was momentarily surprised when his hand passed through. 

“No you’re not, you’re delirious and I shouldn’t have left you alone as long as I did.” Al’s voice was heavy with guilt. “I came back as soon as I could. Ziggy and I figured out a way to get you out of here.” 

“How?” Sam watched Al’s hands flutter and resisted the impulse to try and reach out to steady them. 

“You’ve got a knife in your bag, Sam.” 

“I can’t… we talked about this already, I can’t cut my leg off.” Sam pulled the pocketknife out and waved it under Al’s nose. “This won’t cut through bone even if I thought I could do it without passing out again.”

“No, but if you had enough of a space between your leg and the rock you could work a bit of your climbing rope under there.” Sam blinked, uncomprehending. “Just do as I say, Sammy, please.”

Slowly, haltingly, Sam followed Al’s instructions and chipped a gouge in the boulder by his ankle. Then he threw a bit of rope around it and with the new leverage managed to roll it free. Sam laid back and breathed heavily, shaking with pain and relief, as he heard the boulder fall into the tunnel below him. 

“You did it, Sam, you did it.” Al’s voice was as relieved as Sam had ever heard it. “You’ll be okay now, you’ve just gotta… oh.” 

Sam followed Al’s line of sight to see that the rock had fallen into the tunnel to the cavern in such a way that there was now very little possibility of climbing past it. 

“S’okay.” Sam breathed. “I’ll just go up instead.” 

“You can’t. The cavern is your best bet for being found by the rescue party. We don’t even know what’s further up.”

“Not much choice.” Sam tried to shrug as he struggled up, examining his crushed leg. The tibia was broken in at least three places and many of the bones in his foot were shattered. It was likely Henry Fuller would never walk the same way again, and that was if Sam managed to get him rescued in the next… “how much time til the rescue party goes out?” 

“An hour, but there’s no telling when they’ll find you or even _if_ they will, especially if you’re going to—“ Sam made an abortive movement towards the tunnel above before falling onto his hands. “Sam.” Al said with exasperation. The sound of Al typing on the handlink and the whoosh of the imaging chamber door opening followed. 

“Don’t leave.” Sam managed to crawl a few inches up towards the tunnel. “I know you don’t want… but don’t leave.” 

“Of course not.” Al’s expression was serious and pained. “I’ll stay. Of course.” 

Sam nodded and crawled another foot or so. “Talk to me.” 

“About what?” 

Sam cast his mind about and came up blank. “Anything. Home.” 

“When we get you home, I’m going to take you to see the mountains.” Al said in a soft voice. “You were always after me to go hiking with you and I always turned you down. Since you’ve been gone I’ve thought about that all the time.” 

“Yeah?” Sam said as he turned the corner in the tunnel and leaned his head against cool rock to rest. His leg throbbed and his foot was numb. 

“Yeah. I should have said yes once. I went up to Truchas Peak a few months ago because you’d said you wanted me to see it, the view from the top there.”

“You teased me that you’d been higher up flying planes hundreds of times.” Sam remembered suddenly. 

“That’s right.” Sam could hear the tears in Al’s voice and he kept moving, not wanting to look back, not wanting to embarrass his oldest friend. “But you were right, it was different. It was something completely different.” Sam turned another corner of the tunnel. 

"If I get home," Sam started, and Al shushed him.

“You will. You'll make it home, don't worry.” Al soothed, and Sam rounded another bend in the tunnel and blinked at the expansive cavern opening up before him. He pulled himself up and looked around, and for a moment before he slumped over he thought he saw a handrail glimmering, metal against the rock of the far wall. 

With the last of his strength Sam called out for help, and he heard the crunching of footsteps running towards him through the cave. For a moment before he leaped he imagined the hand he could feel on his wrist was Al's. 


End file.
